Black Friday fever: Here’s how SMES can get in on the action and hype
BLACK Friday, to be held on Friday, November 25, has progressed to take its place among the leading shopping events on the retail calendar.
While Covid-19 put a dampener on consumer spend in 2020, sales rebounded the year after, with research by Payfast putting the average basket size at just over R1 200. Of particular interest was the high volume of online sales during Black Friday last year. According to online payments platform, Peach Payments, online shopping increased by more than 103%. By Cyber Monday (the Monday following Black Friday), Peach Payments had processed more than R250 million.
Retail was the overwhelming winner in the Black Friday e-commerce race, followed by food and beverages, beauty, and finally, travel and accommodation. Experts predict that the full potential of Black Friday 2022 will be thwarted by load shedding and other economic limitations such as rising inflation and petrol costs.
The Bureau of Market Research forecasts additional sales volumes to reach more than R17 billion, with e-commerce snatching up a large piece of the pie. For e-commerce small and medium enterprises (SMES), this is the time to get in on the action and leverage the increased consumer spend.
Three ways to leverage the hype: Leverage the lead-up
On Black Friday, you’ll be going up against the e-commerce heavyweights and the online space will be noisy. Approaching Black Friday creatively could give you the edge to cut through the noise. Why not use Black Friday as a chance to make a lasting first impression? You could host a pre-black Friday sale, offering one-off discounts and deals on your products or services, and cash in on the fact that many of your customers would have set a budget aside for the big day. Running a pre-sale can help you win an earlier chunk of the spend before the Black Friday sales clutter the market.
Introduce new products
The marketing efforts of big e-commerce players work brilliantly at building excitement leading up to the day. Leverage this by using Black Friday to introduce a new product or service. It’s the perfect opportunity to think beyond the day and use it as a launchpad for your festive season product push. Offering the new products at an exclusive, one-off price and encouraging shoppers to be “festive (gift) shopping early birds” could help you push sales and gauge consumer appetites for your new range.
Run a competition
Competitions work well as lead generation tools and to increase a brand’s online following. Black Friday is the perfect time to push sales and on board new leads. You could run a competition in which anyone who shops on your e-commerce platform on Black Friday is entered into a draw to win a big prize. Alternatively, you could put together a campaign that awards Black Friday shoppers with an exclusive “deal a day” – a huge discount on another product. In this way, you’ll be able to use the opportunity to encourage repeat business.
To make the opportunity more irresistible, you could partner with other small businesses and offer a large prize, featuring products from each of the vendors. This way, you’ll be able to leverage the increased traffic generated from your website and social media channels as well as the hype created by the SMES you partner with.
You could include a call-to-action for customers to opt into your mailing list – a great way of building your database before the end-of-year-rush.